One thousand and half representatives will collect proposals for the Popular Front's programme. Deputy Prime Minister Vyacheslav Volodin, chief of the Russian Popular Front's headquarters, said all proposals must be submitted by August 20. He made this statement at the June 14 meeting with representatives of the Russian Popular Front. The information compiled will later serve as the basis for the People's Programme of the United Russia Party and the Front during the election.
The Front's representatives will collect ideas and proposals while meeting with voters. All the proposals will be submitted to the Institute of Social and Political Studies headed by Nikolai Fyodorov. Each representative of the Popular Front is to hold 15-20 meetings during two months. Regional leaders are working hand in hand with the Front's members. Izvestiya's source in the Bashkortostan president's executive office said Rustam Khamitov had already met with the Front's representatives and advised them to pay more attention to high priority regional projects.
Sergei Neverov, secretary of the Presidium of the United Russia Party's General Council, said 20-30 representatives will work in each region. Most of them belong to public organisations. Government officials that belong to the Front will not play an active part in the meetings.
"The work of the Front's representatives will be as informal and open as possible," Alexei Chesnakov, chairman of the Public Council under the Presidium of the United Russia Party's General Council, told Izvestiya. "The Front was not established to multiply paper work but to solve people's problems. Possibly, those regions having a lot of proposals and problems will prepare special reports. Everything depends on their representatives."
Who are these people? Among the meeting's participants are State Duma deputies who will coordinate the work, actors, farmers, doctors, and teachers. Almost every region has representatives from local chapters of the Union of Afghan Veterans, the Women's Union of Russia, the Pensioners' Union, the All-Russian Pedagogical Assembly, trade unions and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
In the Ivanovo Region Lyubov Posiseyeva, vice president of the Russian Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, will be among those collecting ideas for the programme. In the Trans-Baikal Territory, Nikolai Govorin, head of the Coordination Council on Psychiatry and Addictionology, will be responsible for this. The Astrakhan Region is represented by Maria Maksakova, soloist at the Gelikon Opera Theatre; the Moscow Region - by cosmonaut Maxim Surayev; the Nizhny Novgorod Region by Gennady Drozhzhin, president of the Association of Russian Folk Crafts; and St Petersburg by Olga Slutsker, president of the Russian Federation of Fitness and Aerobics. Ms Slutsker told Izvestia that she had only a vague idea of how her work will proceed but hopes to begin a targeted programme to repair school gyms with the help of the Russian Popular Front.
Ideas will be collected online. The Russian National Front's website will be launched on June 20, Andrei Vorobyov, head of United Russia Party's Central Executive Committee, told Izvestiya. People will be able to go to the website and post their proposals on resolving specific tasks in the economic and social sphere.
The Front will also begin drafting the Front's version of the national budget. The leadership at the headquarters of the Russia Popular Front are currently discussing the matter with Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, told Izvestia that changes in the adopted law on the 2012 budget possible: "The Front has a wide range of viewpoints, and reasonable proposals will be considered."
Alexandra Bayazitova